OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 709 



occupied Mill in England, and which in Germany had at 

 the time been taken up by the Neo-Kantians. The 

 result has been that the earlier volumes of Wundt's 

 publications contain the most complete analysis of 

 scientific method yet produced. They cannot be dis- 

 regarded by any one who at the present day desires to 

 deal with the subject. Wundt is in this respect a 

 much more important successor of Mill than Mill's 

 countryman, Spencer. 



Further, though l)oth Spencer and Wundt came from 75. 



. . Hisap- 



scientific to philosophical studies, the order in which proach to 



■*- '- ' philosophy 



they assimilated scientific ideas was not the same, ^"th"^^^*®*^ 

 Spencer was originally a practical engineer, with a ^p^'^''"^- 

 knowledge of mathematics and dynamics going little 

 beyond the practical formulae then habitually used in 

 dealing with problems of engineering and construction. 

 The great change which, about that time, was being 

 introduced into abstract dynamics through the labours of 

 Stokes, Thomson and Tait, and Clerk Maxwell, had not 

 yet made itself felt in practical engineering. Spencer's 

 dynamical notions were thus the traditional ones 

 belonging to the older school, and it does not appear 

 that he ever realised that to a scientific thinker at the 

 end of the century they would appear hopelessly vague, 

 inadequate, and incomplete. Unconnected with his 

 occupation as an engineer, which he presently relin- 

 quished, was his interest in social questions, and it was 

 from this side rather than from the purely scientific 

 side that he approached the great philosophical, which 

 became for him a social, problem. He approached it 

 through the study of biology and of organic forms by 



